Ellen Kullman Takes DuPont in New Directions: Interview

By Carol Hymowitz -
Aug 10, 2012

(Corrects answer to fourth question to show the South
Carolina plant makes Kevlar.)

DuPont Co. (DD) is known for its
dominance in chemicals, but since becoming chief executive
officer in 2009, Ellen Kullman has pushed the 210-year-old
company into unexpected new businesses. Kullman discusses her
plans in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Aug. 13 edition.

Question: What is DuPont focused on today?

Kullman: Food, fuel and safety, I guess, if you want to put
it down to three words.

Kullman: Over a decade ago, I had the opportunity to get to
know their Genencor division, which is industrial biosciences.
We had a development agreement with them, and it seemed like the
skills in that area were very complementary. Together we could
create things, like the cellulosic ethanol program that’s coming
to fruition right now. When Danisco sold off their commodity
sugars business, what was left was a very high-quality portfolio
of products in nutrition and health and biosciences that fit
with where DuPont was going. It’s unique when you buy a company
of that size that everything fits.

We have in trial this year Optimum AQUAmax, which is a corn
variety that tolerates low moisture. With the drought going on
out there, we’re getting to see quite clearly how that performs.
We need to create more resilient seeds that can deal with the
changes in weather patterns in the environment. The need to
produce more food from the same amount of land around the world
is increasing, not decreasing. Science and technology is a way
to enable that.

Question: What about fuel?

Kullman: I’m a big believer in solar. In the next three or
four years, you’re going to get to grid parity (between the cost
of conventional electricity and solar) on average in the world.
It’s an absolutely huge change. We make new materials -- like
the silver lines on a solar panel are a silver-based paste. We
used to commercialize one every three years, and now it’s like
every year. The industry is flocking to it. We’re able to give
higher efficiency on solar panels driving to grid parity. So we
have a lot of materials in solar that are very exciting in terms
of changing the face of that industry.

Question: That’s food and fuel. What about safety? Your
products are on half the cops we’re seeing on TV.

Kullman: From a material-science standpoint, it’s lighter-
weight strength, whether it’s in military in helmets or body
armor or in first responders. Kevlar today is an amazingly
different material than what we pioneered 40 years ago, in terms
of our ability to integrate it into very lightweight structures
that enable it to absorb the energy of a bullet. Nomex, the same
way, to absorb the temperature gradients in fire protection.

I went to our opening of (the Kevlar) plant in Cooper
River, South Carolina, last year and first responders showed up
who were saved by wearing their vests and the appropriate armor.
They keep coming up and thanking me, and I kept saying, “No,
no, no. There’s a woman by the name of Stephanie Kwolek who
really invented that, and we need to thank her.” She’s a
delightful individual, still with us. I don’t know how old
Stephanie is now, but she’s got to be in her late ’80s. It’s
humbling.

Question: What should government do to promote science and
innovation, even in these constrained times?

Kullman: The U.S. has benefited from our country’s long-
term belief that basic research was part of its mission and how
it engaged, whether with universities or with companies like
ours. So I’m a big believer in that. We talk about it a lot to
make sure that our elected officials understand how important
that is to companies like ours, and there are many of them in
the United States where those fundamentals of science really do
help create economic growth. The U.S. has a great history (of
scientific research), and we just have to make sure that doesn’t
kind of get sideswiped by all the other issues we have going on.

Question: What about the educational system?

Kullman: Oh, boy.

Question: Has it let companies like DuPont down?

Kullman: I’m not sure about “let down.” We as a country
have done a lot to enable opportunities around science. We’re
not educating our kids to take advantage of it. And it doesn’t
start in high school; it starts in grade school. It starts with
a science curriculum in grade school that’s relevant to the
kids’ world, which is a lot different than when the science
curriculum was actually written, which was decades ago. There
are a lot of programs out there that try to create that, whether
it’s the Lego Robotics program or Model Maker. And that’s great,
but only if the child has the opportunity to participate after
school or on weekends. It’s got to be part of the core
curriculum.

Delaware, I think, has done a pretty good job. We got Race
to the Top dollars, and we’ve partnered in the state for decades
around science and curriculum. Part of that Race to the Top
money is employing a program out of the Boston Museum of Science
called Engineering is Elementary. It literally starts in first
grade, and it’s the greatest little modules at the appropriate
level for the grade level. That’s what’s needed. Because by the
time a kid gets to eighth grade, it’s almost too late.

A lot of my children’s friends, I’ll talk to them and I’ll
say, “Have you considered engineering?” “Well, what’s that?”
Kids have to see engineering as a great career opportunity.

Question: And girls...

Kullman: Right, not be kind of well, you know, you’re not
(good at) math and science because you’re a girl. And that does
occur today, it really does. One of my senior women, Diane Gulyas, who runs our polymers business, was telling me a story
about engaging with a group of girls at a local high school. She
started with, “Do you know how much engineers make a year,
starting?” These are like ninth grade through 12th grade. All
of a sudden the ears perked up. You can make a good living as an
engineer.

Question: What’s been most surprising to you about being a
CEO?

Kullman: There’s a presumption that we know everything and
make all the decisions. But we operate tremendously through our
people, our 70,000 people, in this company. It’s not about
issuing a command. It’s about gaining alignment. Connecting
every person into what they do every day and how it relates to
the success of the company is hugely important. That’s a big
part of my job.

Question: Where do you look for the next big brains?

Kullman: I spend a lot of time at universities telling them
what DuPont is. Graduate schools, undergraduate engineering
schools...

Kullman: We’ve established programs in India, in China. I
love going out there and talking to them. It’s a lot of fun.
We’re an old company from the standpoint of the age of our
employees in the U.S. and Western Europe, and we have to renew.

Question: There’s been a lot of discussion lately about
having it all as women. Can you have it all?

Kullman: I’m not sure what “all” is. I’m a big believer
that what’s right for me, what is all for me, is probably
different than what’s all for you. And how I might do it is very
different than how you would do it. But that doesn’t mean one’s
right or wrong. I always counsel (women), you’ve got to go where
your energy is. Because if you don’t love it, if you don’t
absolutely love it, you know then it’s not going to be as
fulfilling. So I love what I do. I love this company.

Question: How do you feel about how DuPont is portrayed?

Kullman: The IT guys have stolen the technology word, the
tech word. When you say technology, it kind of means the IT
space. And I think there is so much cutting-edge technology
going on in companies like ours today and other companies,
whether it’s in biotechnology or advanced material science. Even
electronics have a lot of DuPont content in them.

We enable a lot of that to occur. And some of our customers
let us talk about it; others don’t. We have a growing business
in electronics and communications, in handhelds and tablets and
displays and new technologies like organic light-emitting
diodes. I mean, the real crisp, popping color displays in the
future are going to be made with DuPont materials, DuPont
technology. People say we are a chemical company. Well, we use
chemistry. People say we are an industrial company. Yes, but we
are really using cutting-edge science to solve a lot of the
tough problems in the world. That’s where the fun is.